He was a bachelor, and slept in a room at the back of his office, cooking some of his meals himself, getting others at a restaurant close by.

Though he had little visible practice, he was understood to be well-to-do and even more, and people tacitly inferred that he "shaved notes." The Methodists of Octavius looked upon him as a queer fish, and through nearly a dozen years had never quite outgrown their hebdomadal tendency to surprise at seeing him enter their church.
He had never, it is true, professed religion, but they had elected him as a trustee now for a number of terms, all the same--partly because he was their only lawyer, partly because he, like both his colleagues, held a mortgage on the church edifice and lot.

In person, Mr.Gorringe was a slender man, with a skin of a clear, uniform citron tint, black waving hair, and dark gray eyes, and a thin, high-featured face.

He wore a mustache and pointed chin-tuft; and, though he was of New England parentage and had never been further south than Ocean Grove, he presented a general effect of old Mississippian traditions and tastes startlingly at variance with the standards of Dearborn County Methodism.
Nothing could convince some of the elder sisters that he was not a drinking man.
The three visitors had completed their survey of the room now; and Loren Pierce emitted a dry, harsh little cough, as a signal that business was about to begin.

At this sound, Winch drew up his feet, and Gorringe untied a parcel of account-books and papers that he held on his knee.
Theron felt that his countenance must be exhibiting to the assembled brethren an unfortunate sense of helplessness in their hands.